Introduction

The GTX 1080 has proven to be quite popular ever since it was released just shy of a year ago. Although NVidia could be content with just happily selling GTX 1080s until the next generation of video card are released, they weren’t. In fact, they gave the GTX 1080 a memory upgrade. NVidia bumped up the original GTX 1080s GDDR5X memory clock speed by 10% to 11Gbps. This is the same as the more expensive GTX 1080 Ti and increases the GTX 1080s memory bandwidth from 320 GB/s to 352 GB/s.

Asus has given this new design their own twist, creating the ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 OC Edition 8GB 11Gbps. It utilizes 8GB of GDDR5X memory clocked at 11010 MHz. The Nvidia GP104-400-A1 GPU leverages 2560 Cuda cores and is backed by 160 TMUs and 60 ROPs. The default GTX 1080 default core base clock is 1607 MHz. Asus pumps the base clock up to 1690 MHz with 1835 MHz boost in default mode and 1721 MHz with 1860 MHz boost in default mode. This yields a nice bump in performance.

All this added performance adds extra heat. A 2.5 slot card provides 40% more cooling surface area than the typical 2 slot design. Asus has also constructed the cooler with their MaxContact technology, which features an enhanced copper heat spreader that directly contacts the GPU, allowing 2 times more surface area than typical heat spreaders. Finally there are also two external fan headers for additional fans if needed.

Asus Aura Sync RGB LED synchronization allows users customizable lighting control via Asus’s Aura software. If the user has other Asus and/or Aura compatible products, a full version of Aura is available for download that will allow control of the lighting for those products as well. To top is off there’s VR-friendly HDMI ports let gamers easily enjoy immersive virtual reality experiences.